Desti

Online travel guide app

Description

Desti -a spin-out from SRI International- was a traveling and mapping iPad app that used AI to help its user plan their trips and find the best destination based on their preferences. After the user set his preferences the app would essentially work as a search engine finding hotels, restaurants or any other location based on the data and reviews found online regarding said destination. It would then choose and present the one that most closely matched the user's specifications.

Stats

Category

Travel

Country

United States

Started

In 2011

Closed

By 2014

Number of Founders

Three

Name of Founders

Imri Goldberg, Mosi Shuchman, Nadav Gur

Number of Employees

Between 1 And 10

Number of Funding Rounds

2

Total Funding Amount

$2M

Number of Investors

3

Precise Cause of Failure

Bad Business Model

Business Outcome

Acquired

Cause of Failure

Desti wasn’t a faulty app
on its own, nor were its services obsolete. The problem seemed to be that
although users found the application to be useful and appreciated its location
suggestions, they ultimately ended up doing the booking from other more trusted
platforms or known brands. It followed that due to its failure to generate
revenue from its service, investments came short in the Series A round.

There was also the fact
that Desti was a newcomer in a sector which had already several giants such as
TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet competing against themselves and to which users
automatically resorted to.

Desti was ultimately
acquired by Nokia with several members of the Desti team also ending up joining
the Finnish multinational company. Nokia said that it planned to use the
powerful semantic back-end search engine technology provided by Desti to
enhance Nokia’s maps platform, creating thus a revolutionary type of location
services that understands and perhaps anticipates users’ destination
preferences.

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Desti -a spin-out from SRI International- was a traveling and mapping iPad app that used AI to help its user plan their trips and find the best destination based on their preferences. After the user set his preferences the app would essentially work as a search engine finding hotels, restaurants or any other location based on the data and reviews found online regarding said destination. It would then choose and present the one that most closely matched the user's specifications.

Cause of Failure

Desti wasn’t a faulty app
on its own, nor were its services obsolete. The problem seemed to be that
although users found the application to be useful and appreciated its location
suggestions, they ultimately ended up doing the booking from other more trusted
platforms or known brands. It followed that due to its failure to generate
revenue from its service, investments came short in the Series A round.

There was also the fact
that Desti was a newcomer in a sector which had already several giants such as
TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet competing against themselves and to which users
automatically resorted to.

Desti was ultimately
acquired by Nokia with several members of the Desti team also ending up joining
the Finnish multinational company. Nokia said that it planned to use the
powerful semantic back-end search engine technology provided by Desti to
enhance Nokia’s maps platform, creating thus a revolutionary type of location
services that understands and perhaps anticipates users’ destination
preferences.